


Steve Rogers and the minefields of social media

by cpt_winniethepooh



Series: Happy Steve Bingo fills [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Assumptions, Coming Out, Healing, Instagram, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Social Media, Twitter, coming home, mentioned avengers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 17:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16791373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cpt_winniethepooh/pseuds/cpt_winniethepooh
Summary: Steve gets a Twitter account, then an Instagram one, then he gets Bucky back, too.





	Steve Rogers and the minefields of social media

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [don't step on his gown (he'll make you regret it)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20281543) by [cpt_winniethepooh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cpt_winniethepooh/pseuds/cpt_winniethepooh). 



> Written for the [Happy Steve Bingo](https://happystevebingo.tumblr.com/) for the prompt "social media".

The day Captain America gets a Twitter account is the day the world loses its mind.

Generally speaking.

Tony Stark has had one even before he became Iron Man. That’s normal. That’s what playboy billionaires do. 

But Cap? Who even taught him how to use the internet?

Of course it isn’t Cap. It’s Steve Rogers that creates an account, which is a small difference for the public, but a great one for the Steve in question.

It starts out innocent enough. He gains a couple thousand followers by just existing, and he likes and retweets from his fellow teammates, let those be goofy cheesy inside jokes or serious statements. Nothing new, nothing out of the ordinary. But then. Oh Lord, but then.

There are bets online about what he would use the platform for. The conservatives think he’ll call out the misbehavior of today’s youth. Some expect something patriotic, something quotable. Words to live by, from an actual role model.

His first actual tweet is something entirely different: a series of senseless letters, in no particular order.

Half the world is convinced it’s a secret code.

The other believe his account was hacked.

His second actual tweet is an apology for essentially falling asleep while browsing and and accidentally posting a keyboard smash.

Steve doesn’t really learns to use Twitter. Sure he starts to post political opinions on women’s rights or migration — all very liberal, to the shock of nobody that has actually spoken with him in person — but it doesn’t pick up because Steve doesn’t pick up on the Twitter lingo. 

Or maybe he is just too angry to be fully expressed in 140 characters. 

But then Instagram happens. And oh boy, does he pick up on Instagram.

The pictures paint an elaborate wall of his mindset: most things are carefully shot, but aren’t artificially artistic. The schoolbooks and museums didn’t lie, because Steve Rogers has an artist’s eye for detail, but he lacks the ego to make it unbearable to enjoy. He has clear focus, good lighting, but what generates the most feedback is the subject of his photos.

At first his face is never in them, it’s just a photo of a homeless person and a vehement rant underneath about how New York should care more about its inhabitants. And maybe this is why he loves Instagram, because he can show  _ and  _ tell. 

It picks up steam when fans put two and two together, for instance how homeless shelters around the city receive huge anonymous donations soon after that photo is published, or how Steve uses the chance in half a dozen follow-up interviews to mention why he thinks the government is at fault, not the homeless.

The real change happens when he starts to post selfies. The first one is at a counter-protest for Planned Parenthood, and the tags read, “Someone said it may reach more people if my face is in it” and the photo features two-thirds of his frowning face.

It does get 10k by the next morning, so whoever said it, they were right. 

(It was Natasha.)

He walks and selfies from Women’s March. In front of dog shelters. Pride. 

It’s like he’s doing it to piss the Republicans off, and boy, does it work. Especially when he wears a knock-off MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN cap, except instead of great it say livable.

He proudly reclaims his identity as an Irish Catholic, son of immigrants, whenever someone challenges him to pretty much anything. And then he goes back to Twitter.

His feed is nothing but comments in threads, and he does not wear kid’s gloves when he is calling someone a bigoted idiot or protests about historical accuracies.

Tony uses the next team interview to thank him for being entertaining enough to pull the focus away from Tony, and Steve’s response is fishing his phone out and tweeting “anytime <3” — a message that becomes his most liked.

And then, when everybody is sure they’ve seen it all, Bucky Barnes comes back from the dead.

Steve is silent online, for a suspiciously long amount of time. There’s no pictures for months, and he maybe reacts on Twitter once a week, and even that feels half-hearted.

No wonder: his heart is with someone else.

Pepper takes over the PR side of things because the issue of World War II vet and Cap’s best buddy turned Russian assassin coming back from the dead is an issue that needs a delicate hand, especially in the absence of SHIELD. So first she releases the redacted files on the Winter Soldier; the ones that describe and showcase the torture, the brainwashing, and the brutal, non-consensual nature of his captivity. She features psychologists to comment about victim behavior and answer questions like “but why didn’t he leave when he had the chance?”. Every expert (and every sane person) is quick to underline that the case of the Winter Soldier is unprecedented, that they really have nothing to compare it to in terms of sheer brutality and duration.

Once the uproar calms down, she also releases the info about his identity — with the approval of a worried Steve and a slowly but steadily recovering Bucky, of course.

Steve doesn’t even go online for weeks, and he couldn’t care less about public opinion at this point. 

His first picture on Instagram after about six months after his self-inflicted hiatus is of a cup of coffee with the caption “Bucky made it for me just like during the ‘30s”

It continues in the same vein. A photo of the sunrise, and underneath, “Everything is beautiful after an all-night’s sleep.” His own hand, paint-stained and unwashed, “Art is medicine for the soul”. A picture of some uneven muffins clearly fresh from the oven, “I’m so blessed to come home to this”.

It’s like a diary, an insight to Steve’s soul, the one that had been hidden from the world — the one he shares with Bucky. 

Even the ones that believed they had seen it all are surprised to see this. 

Soon, his Instagram is nothing but praises of every little thing that Bucky does. 

Tables are turned when Bucky gets an account too. And his is nothing like Steve’s.

First off he doesn’t care about artistic integrity, focus, or even proper visibility. He just snaps a picture and posts it; but he gains followers quickly and the majority seems to love him — mostly because of his photos of Steve. Most importantly, his  _ undignified  _ photos of Steve.

Steve as he’s burned himself because he forgot to wear gloves when taking out a tray of Bucky’s muffins from the owen — Steve has to post a picture of his healed hand later to quiet those that worried about him and assure his followers that Bucky was angry, not amused. Steve soaked through the skin because he didn’t bring an umbrella, and soon after another featuring Steve cocooned under a pile of warm blankets, glaring at the camera. Bucky does caption that with “timeout on account of idiocity”. Steve reposts it, once he’s allowed to leave the fort.

There are images of Steve getting his shield stuck in various places and trying to break it out, mostly after Bucky’s decided to join the Avengers and they start training together. There’s a picture of Steve staring at Tony and Bruce with mouth hanging open, clearly having no idea what they are talking about. There’s a dopy-faced Steve wearing a knitted scarf (courtesy of Bucky) that Steve sets as his wallpaper, which becomes public information when Bucky snaps a picture of it and posts it — quite gleefully — online. The most controversial one is a poorly-lit one of Steve asleep in the middle of the night, but Steve still likes that one, so.

They take their conversations to Twitter, too. Bucky just keeps nagging him there, clearly in the hopes of putting enough peer pressure on Steve to make him stop doing stupid shit. “Have you thought about using your shield to SHIELD yourself?”, for instance, which the whole team like and Steve retweets, answering “have you ever thought about watching my six, not my twelve?”, which then Bucky retweets, saying “i have to watch everything because you attract danger like a magnet”, which makes it into the ragtags as well. 

Even if Bucky’s tactics are ineffective, they are hilariously entertaining. Tony posts a picture of the team in his jet, and Bucky immediately reacts “Don’t let Steve behind the wheel! He has this urge to drive everything into the sea”, which earns a reblog and laughing-while-crying emojis from Sam. There’s a picture of a key in his hand, and the caption says “Locked Steve out of the gym because he needs to find better coping mechanisms” , which, again, Sam likes. Steve retaliates by locking Bucky out of the kitchen, but that backfires spectacularly in the form of Bucky’s next tweet from a burger joint, saying “okay, but you’re paying for our meal, pal”.

Then there’s the mundane stuff. A blurry image of the opening credits of Moana with their legs popped up on the coffee table in front of the TV say “movie night”, and Steve adds an after shot of a few dozen tissues littered around the couch. “Cooking for two (2) super soldiers” has a photo attached of a shopping cart filled to the brim with nothing but flour, eggs, milk and cocoa powder. 

Steve’s instagram is 80% made of pictures about or related to Bucky. A ball of yarn in the shade “peacock” that says “because someone can’t stop knitting me scarves even though I can’t catch a cold now”, to which Bucky responds, “No, you just freeze into a block of ice, what a development”. There are a lot of quiet shots of Bucky, as he’s cooking, as he’s petting dogs at the park, as he’s working out, and all of them have something very similar in the captions, something along the lines of “how lucky am I to see this”, or “blessed”, or “loved”. 

An online essay is published in the New York Times about the evolution of Steve Rogers, online persona, and it breaks down his phases, his priorities and his image. What it boils down to is that Steve now seems happier and more balanced than ever, now that it turns out he hasn’t lost everything, now that he sees a personal goal worth not only surviving, but  _ living _ for.

It gets an uproar, some backlash from conservatives because the comments are full of #stevebucky supporters, and trending hashtags that inform Steve and Bucky that they would be welcome to come out, if they want.

Steve’s response is one that even Obama reblogs, a photo of his fingers laced together with silver metal, and it only says #thankyou.

**Author's Note:**

> The peacock wool is a nod to [@dixiehellcat ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dixiehellcat/pseuds/dixiehellcat) ;) 
> 
> Also, I find it really hard to write about a happy Steve if he isn't in a relationship - I think it's because I read him as very depressed in the movies and I just can't imagine him going to therapy or anything like that, (WHICH HE SHOULD BTW), and so I'm resorting to the transformative power of love. Ehh. I hope it still qualifies for the bingo.
> 
> Speaking of: I wanted to format this into a mixed media thing and be part of another series of mine, but maybe I'll just remix it in the future when I won't be buried under assignments XD 
> 
> Please tell me your thoughts! Positive feedback is like food for the starving author. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [don't step on his gown (he'll make you regret it)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20281543) by [cpt_winniethepooh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cpt_winniethepooh/pseuds/cpt_winniethepooh)




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